Embracing the Art of Drunken Kung Fu: CMAT 2007 Tournament

This particular year’s CMAT was the 15th Annual UC Berkeley Chinese Martial Arts Tournament held in 2007. Congrats to everyone that competed and thanks to everyone who helped coordinate the event!

Now before I begin my story of my pre-after-party at CMAT I should note that this was in my younger sillier days. Also that the movie Drunken Master II really inspired me to learn martial arts… so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I took it upon me to learn drunken style.

So typically every year after the CAL wushu tournament there is an after-party. Well this year.. I got a little head start on the after-party a couple hours before the after-party started.

I drove with a couple (non-wushu) college friends from LA to Berkeley and they had been watching a day of wushu since 8am and it was about 7pm… I had finished longfist, straight sword, and spear and just had one event left which didn’t count towards the all-around placings. That event was— drunken straight sword. Apparently someone got the idea that we should make a trip to a nearby Berkeley bar to get some food and drinks. Now since these guys had been with me the WHOLE day from morning till night at this competition, it was only right for me to go get some food and drinks with them.

Above you can see I’m still in my competition silk because I still have one event left.

Long story short: 5 shots later, 1-2 hrs later- this is me a few minutes before my turn to compete in the open weapons division.

Here we go..

..and

Then we had Alex and Matt B. by the ring getting me up ready to go.. saying.. “The H is O”… The HEAT is ON! Alex even had to help me… apparently I was having difficulty getting my sweater off.

And here’s me competing..

Well… through fully embracing the art form, I ended up taking gold in the event!* haha!

*note: I definitely do not support drinking as part of any form of “training”. I was college age and with some friends after a long day of competing so we ended up having drinks. It made for a fun story, but definitely not something to be practiced. lol